Talking Round the Vision Pool
by Scarabbug
Summary: Cynder is trying to ask for forgiveness. This was never going to be easy.


**Really, I should know better than to try and write fanfiction while fluey. Takes place in the middle of the Spyro Game: The Eternal Night. Hence the prompt connection.**

**This was inspired by a picture by the deviantartist _Rassek_, which featured Ignitus and Cynder and something similar to the story below. Standard disclaimers apply. Reviews and concrit are appreciated.**

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'_Cynder. Ever since I failed the night of the raid, I've dreamt of this day...'_

- Ignitus (Gary Oldman), "The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning".

'_Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.'_

- Paul Boese.

Talking Round the Vision Pool.

The visions has been quiet tonight.

Which stands to reason. If he were to call this moment in time anything, it would probably be "the calm before the storm", and the storm itself is in no hurry. It might take weeks, or even months, before they even begin to understand the consequences of Convexity's collapse. Ignitus can't pretend that he isn't grateful for the respite. Lately, he has found staring into an empty pool a great deal more encouraging that staring into visions of what could be.

That is when he sees her reflection against the green surface. She stands in the shadows, small and still and virtually invisible, and so it takes some time before he realises she is there. He is usually more alert than this, and the fact that he was unaware of her presence for so long... bothers him somewhat.

'Um... Ignitus, sir?'

Still, she being who she is, perhaps it shouldn't come as such a surprise.

'...Cynder.'

'Um. Yeah. Sorry, you're busy Looking, I didn't... it's just that Spyro said you'd be here and... um... yeah. You're Looking. I'll go away.'

And she turns to do just that. Ignitus uses an age old technique to prevent her from disappearing –he lays his tail across her path.

'The correct term, young dragon, is _Seeing_, not Looking.'

Cynder stops trying to walk away and glances back with dark, green eyes. She has questions, he realises. Questions which have very little to do with how the Pool of Visions works. It doesn't take a clairvoyant to see that.

'Oh. Is... is that important?'

'More important that you might imagine it to be. There is a great different,' he said, settling down and looking away from the pool, 'between looking at something and truly seeing. This is the first lesson that any dragon who is capable of seeing visions must learn. Come here. I'll show you.'

Cynder hesitates for a moment, afraid to approach, or perhaps simply afraid to accept the invitation, but eventually she approaches and sits down, crouching back and keeping her distance both from Ignitus, and from the pool itself.

'I... I can't see anything. Am I missing something?'

'Not at all,' Ignitus erassures her, without fully understanding why. He knows that very few dragons have the gift of second sight. fewer still have the gift of third. He imagines Cynder is only just getting used to having control of her first sight again... What must it have been like for her, serving the Dark Master's will with such unknowing loyalty? 'The visions are very quiet, tonight. A few brief glimpses of history. Nothing more.'

He remembers her egg.

There had been few black shells that year –only half a dozen at the most. He recalls the details of each one. Hers had been less than flawless, mottled with faint grey and pink wherever the light touched it. The night that the Ape King took her away there had been no light except for the torches, and its surface appeared as black as her shadow does now. He remembers...

'Oh.' Cynder leans forwards, only slightly, wanting to look but not confident enough in her right to do so. 'Is... that strange?'

'Perhaps a little,' Ignitus admits. 'Though given the circumstances, it's to be anticipated. There are no visions of the future tonight, only glimpses into the past.'

'Well, better than that things you don't want to see huh?' She manages half of what he supposes is supposed to be a smile. It makes him wonder what her true smile looks like - the one not driven by discomfort of cruelty.

'Yes, perhaps that's so. But sometimes, such peace is merely a respite before further fury.'

'...Am I a circumstance?'

'I'm sorry?' Ignitus is... slightly confused by the question, but it wasn't like Cynder had spent a great deal of time conversing with other dragons. He imagined her company all these years had consisted of apes, monsters and slaves.

'You know. Is the fact that I'm not... you know, big and scary anymore, a circumstance?' Cynder shrugged, and like with all young dragons, even that simple movement seems to take up most of the muscles in her small body. 'Is that changing what you see?'

'Well... there are many things that affect what I can see each time, Cynder. Clairvoyance is an ancient art, but its qualities are ever fleeting. Most gifts can be honed and focused, concentrated until they can be utilised constantly and with no difficulty. But psychic abilities are not nearly so refined. Their usage takes... time, reflection and patience...' He pauses when he realised that she is looking at him and blinking in a way which seems confused. He forgot for a moment that he was speaking to a child. '...I apologise for boring you, sometimes I forget. It is difficult for one not familiar with clairvoyance to understand.'

'I don't think it's boring,' Cynder says, and Ignitus can see honestly in her face as she says it. 'I could never do anything like that, that's all... Not even when I was big. I remember doing all the things that my... that the Dark Master wanted me to do, and I could do all those things, but I wasn't sure how, and I wasn't sure why.'

She scratches her claws against the stone floor of the temple. There is nothing much he can say to that. He merely watches her for a moment. Hours earlier she was renowned and fearsome. Now he can't imagine the number of creatures who would wish to destroy her, small and weak as she is.

'Time you learned how complicated life can be,' she says eventually, and her choice of words makes Ignitus glance in her direction again. It's hard to focus on the vision pool now. 'I said that, didn't I? I said it to Spyro... I was kinda crazy, but I think I was kind of right, too, wasn't I? Life _is_ complicated. It isn't simple at all...'

'I would be the first to tell you it is not, had you not already realised it for yourself.' Ignitus smiles slightly. 'I believe it was Spyro too who once said that nothing worthwhile is ever simple.'

'Maybe he's right,' Cynder shrugs again, not sounding entirely sure whether or not she actually believes it.

For a while there is nothing but the night time silence. His quiet and her still anxiety, the confusion between strangers (at one time, enemies) who should be family. She opens her mouth several times, as if to speak, but the words fall away before she can utter them, and Ignitus is just trying to think of something –anything– that he can possibly say to her, when she finally finds the courage to ask him: 'Did it hurt?'

'...Hurt?'

'The thing I did... with the crystal and the magic. It hurt Volteer,' she adds after a moment, speaking in a way that almost reminds Ignitus of his childhood –being caught by the then-dragon Elders with his nose in the vision pool outside of proper viewing hours –knowing of his guilt and being unable to deny it. 'He... he roared. Or screamed. Or something. I'm not sure but... I know it hurt him, so it must've hurt everybody else. Having your magic dragged out of you like that...' she shudders. 'I know what that feels like now.'

'...I see. Tell me, what else do you remember?' Ignitus asks.

She doesn't want to talk about this. She never came here to talk about this, but he can see no other way around the issue. She keeps her distance from the pool, as if she is afraid what she might see within her own reflection. The death and destruction her existence has evoked. For that is what Ignitus sees around her now – a sullen cloud of lost lives and damaged minds. And pain. So much incredible pain that it almost hurts to think about.

'I remember that I needed power. A lot of it. So I could set my master free. I set up the crystal the way he told me to,' Cynder says, quietly. 'And I waited for it to take your magic out from you, the way it did all the others. But it was all spread out through every part of you... Kind of like Spyro's was spread throughout me, when he changed me back to me real body in Convexity, only... different.' She pauses, tail curled tightly around her feet. 'I had to change the way the crystal worked, keep powering it up, attacking you... Make it tear right into you so I could find the power I needed. You really didn't want to give it up at all... '

She looks up at him. Solemn, expectant, desperate for explanations.

...There should have been more of her, five more with her colouring. A hundred more without it. There should be many children in the temple tonight, trying hard to sleep amidst anxious whispers in the darkness. It seems so very iniquitous that there should now be only two remaining.

'...If I had, then you would have used that power against Spyro.' Ignitus says, as softly as he can. 'I couldn't allow that.'

There is no sense, he decides, in blinding her to the truth. She has already seen and done too much to be satisfied with the non-answers and commentary that the other guardians have been giving her. Comments such as "Many things simply utterly cannot be helped no matter how very uncomfortable they might be –and usually are– for all involved, don't trouble yourself on things of the past, of history, it's gone, forgotten, all over now," (Volteer) and "Sometimes existence is difficult, but we are not always to blame four our own inabilities, young dragon, and our inner strength shall always win out" (Terrador) and "Simply be grateful that you were brought to a halt before more damage could be done" (Cyril, of course).

Asides from that, Ignitus feels that is it important, that she understands exactly what it was that the Dark Master turned her into.

'I thought it was something like that.' Cynder says, softly. 'So it wasn't so much about saving the world was it? Just about saving Spyro...' She shook her head slightly. 'I'd never imagine him needing to be saved if I hadn't seen it myself.'

Ignitus cannot answer that statement; he is too surprised by its emergence. 'There is no need to fear us, Cynder. We understand better than you realise.'

'...I want to say I'm sorry,' Cynder says, carefully. 'I _want_ to. I just... Ignitus, I...'

'Is it necessary?'Cynder stops when he asks that. Then she shakes her head, shudders and... paces. The way Cyril does when tense, or Spyro when angry or Volteer whenever... well, whenever he has the opportunity to do so. Her wings flare and she shakes her head and refuses to meet her elder's eye.

She looks, Ignitus realises after a long (and almost amusing) moment, rather like the child she is. Petulant and confused about everything, the way dragonlets were always intended to be. The way in which she should have had the opportunity to grow up.

'I don't know, but tried to say it. To Spyro. He just shook his head. He says there's nothing for me to be sorry _about_, but look at all this, Ignitus, look at what I did!' She is glaring out across the landscape now –he cold hollowness of the Swamps and Mushroom Lands and the cold, hard solidity of the Mountains in the distance: all worn bare and ragged by her power over the last twelve years. 'And he says that it's nothing? That I didn't do anything wrong? I killed people! Me, Cynder, the Queen of Conquer, _Cynder; the Monster of the Dark Master_, filling all the skies with terror!' She snaps, spitting the words as if they make a bad taste in her mouth, and Ignitus wishes that he could pretend those last words had not, at one time, emerged from his mouth also. And then she half laughs. 'Wouldn't think it to look at me now, would you? I'm a killer and he looks at me like I'm just...'

She stops. Her body deflates, her wings fall limply to her sides and the anger vanishes from her face, replaced by cold sorrow. '...Like I'm just like him.'

'Then perhaps Spyro sees in you the thing you refuse to see in yourself.'

'No, you don't understand, I loved him!' Cynder is yelling again. Ignitus isn't certain where the anger is coming from but one way or another, he is going to find out. 'Doesn't anyone get that? I cared about the Dark Master he... he was my master, he made me that way, and now...'

And now she knows nothing, Ignitus finishes the thought that she does not speak aloud in his mind. Now she is alone and afraid, unsure of what awaits her. Unsure of who would want to kill her, had they the opportunity. Unable to decide who she shall become. So desiring absolution, and yet unable to ask for it.

He offers it anyway. And when she attempts to move away, back into the temple, he places a claw in front of her path to prevent her. He is sure that she hadn't... anticipated the gesture. He imaged that she had never been held before, except possibly in the harsh grip of an ape, or the cold envelopment of shadows. She isn't used to the warmth and the carefulness involved. He feels her entire body tighten up, trembling, as if she's trying to curl back up inside of her shell. It takes over a minute before she relaxes and buries her face into his front.

She might be crying, but it's difficult to tell. She keeps her face and eyes well hidden. Yet still he knows that there is nothing left of her that he can connect to that creature that tore an entire nation asunder.

She is a fire dragon Ignitus thinks, as he holds her close. He knew this from the moment he first encountered her on the battlefield. One of _his_, whether or not she truly understands that yet. Had she lived with them before tonight, she would have been brought up learning the ways of fire and magic under his tutelage. She would have played with other children her own age, irritated Cyril with endless questions, been amongst those many dragon hatchlings who would have filled the temple with magic and brightened up these dark days...

So many children dead... and now only two remain: A purple dragon with the weight of the world on his small shoulders, and a black scaled, angry and frightened child, who has never before tasted comfort, and has never had to ask for forgiveness.

She is forgiven, nonetheless. Before them, the vision pool lies empty, showing not even the merest glimpse into what future might yet befall them, and there is nothing for them beyond this night.

This is exactly where Volteer finds them, several hours later, just as the sun is beginning to rise, pale green over the distant mountains, and Cynder has long since fallen asleep within the hold of her Guardian. For once in his surprisingly long life, Volteer succeeds in keeping utterly silent.

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**When you think about it, it's no wonder Cynder left at the beginning of "_The Eternal Night_". The poor kid must have the guilt trip of the century and sometimes, no amount of others forgiveness can half you at a time like that. Not when you've done the things Cynder has. And then of course there are the guardians being so darn _understanding_ about it all... Confusion, much?**

**I wish I could call this a happy ending, but... well, you all know what comes next.**


End file.
